Why The Media 'Can't Handle the Truth' About Accretive Health

Contributor's Note: We at insideARM.com have been covering the Accretive Health (NYSE:AH) "scandal" since Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson first published her 100+ page report indicting (in the common, not legal sense of the word) Accretive for badgering patients into making payments and other debt collection abuses [sic]--or at least that's what an overwhelming majority of mainstream media outlets heard when they rained down invective in headline after headline on the Illinois-based revenue cycle management company.

But in reality the scandalous aspect of the Accretive yarn doesn't lie with the subject of those stories; it falls squarely upon reporters and Ms. Swanson herself for a failure of clear vision. In the words of Col. Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men (1992): "You can't handle the truth!" I would argue that at the precise moment in Rob Reiner's film when Jack Nicholson's Jessup utters those now-iconic words, he's 100 percent correct. Jessup's problem, however is that he also committed a crime under military law. But those things--the excited utterance and the crime itself are, for an instant, mutually exclusive. Tom Cruise and Demi Moore and all the fictional American civilians in the motion picture cannot, in fact, handle the truth--AND Col. Jessup's actions led to the death of one of his men.

If one were to produce "A Few Bad Debt Collectors" to chronicle the saga that has unfolded around Accretive Health, the story line would be much the same... well, half of it. Journalists across the country and the most powerful lawyer in the State of Minnesota can't handle the truth about Accretive. Too bad (regarding box office receipts for our made-up blockbuster) that Accretive, unlike Jack, didn't commit any crime.

When the Minnesota Attorney General’s office issued a scathing report criticizing how a hospital contractor managed the collection of patient fees, it inadvertently attacked what are correctly understood as vital health care industry best practices for revenue cycle management (RCM).

Last month Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson released a six-volume “compliance review” of Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services, a not-for-profit chain of seven hospitals and more than 40 clinics, and its contractual relationship with Accretive Health, a publicly traded firm offering revenue cycle management services for hospitals.

Swanson’s report directed most of its ire at Accretive, the out-of-state company, rather than the hospital/clinic system based in her state, even though many of the policies and procedures her office found repugnant were in place before Accretive took over management of Fairview’s revenue cycle operations. The national media jumped upon the more salacious parts of the compliance review report upon its release and Accretive’s stock fell by half in the day’s following the AG’s announcement.

Over the last 10 days, Accretive has fought back, launching a counter public relations effort, denying the charges, accusing the Attorney General of acting in bad faith and launching an initiative to establish national standards for patient financial practices.

The Attorney General must be feeling the heat. In the midst of Accretive’s PR campaign, the AG’s hometown paper, The Minneapolis Star Tribune (whose pro-consumer sympathies are well documented), last week published a story about Fairview complaints against Accretive that was nothing more than a regurgitation of the charges released in April. The Attorney General has now added a link to her main web page, actively soliciting the public for complaints about Accretive.

Attorney General Swanson has yet to file any civil or criminal complaints against Accretive related to the release of the report, although in January her office did file a lawsuit against Accretive for losing a laptop that contained patient information. Despite more than 113 pages of accusations and supporting material dealing with a company in one of the most regulated industries in the United States there has not been one new lawsuit or criminal charge.